UNCLASSIFIED
Quality Alert Information
Affected product and product P/N:
Agilent 80 MHz Function/Arbitrary Waveform Generator 33250A
Issue Description:
The 33250A waveform generator is being used to provide an external triggering signal to a 1000 watt
continuous wave laser. The signal is a customized pulse shape crucial to controlling laser output. Once
the generator is manually triggered, the output of the laser immediately follows the output of the
waveform generator. On 03/16/2011, while changing the duty cycle of a square pulse function, the
output of the waveform generator unexpectedly went high and stayed high without the instrument
being triggered. This resulted in an unexpected laser output.
Additional testing of the waveform generator showed that the output signal does not go high every time
the pulse duty cycle is changed: it appears to be intermittent. The vendor was able to reproduce this
issue using their own instrument. It was also found that several spurious pulses are generated every
time the function generator is changed from one mode to another, such as going from a square pulse to
an arbitrary pulse and back again, without the instrument being triggered. While this does not result in
the laser going to full power continuously, the spurious pulses can fire the laser unexpectedly without
the waveform being manually triggered.
Action Taken:
The vendor of both the waveform generator and laser were notified of the event.
Root Cause:
Unexpected signals were sent to the output of the waveform generator without the instrument being
manually triggered. This resulted in the unintended firing of a class 4 laser.
UNCLASSIFIED